Mulling Action, India Equates Iraq, Pakistan

Friday, April 11, 2003

Washington Post Foreign Service

NEW DELHI, April 10 -- Asserting the same right of preemptive war that the
United States used to justify its invasion of Iraq, Indian officials have
accused Washington of failing to end Pakistan's support for guerrillas in
Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir and warned that India may be forced to
take limited military action against its nuclear-armed neighbor.

In a series of recent public statements, Indian officials have stepped up
accusations that, contrary to assurances he provided the United States last
spring, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, has been giving free
rein to militants fighting to end Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan
region.

While India has made such charges before, it has lately begun to draw
parallels to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha
told Parliament on Wednesday that Pakistan's nuclear capability and alleged
support for the Kashmir groups make it a "fitter case" for intervention than
Iraq.

Indian officials say that following a brief crackdown on militant groups
last summer, Pakistan is now permitting the operation of up to 120 training
camps for the fighters and is once again helping them cross the cease-fire
line -- called the Line of Control -- that separates Pakistani and Indian
forces in Kashmir.

Moreover, they say, intercepted messages provide strong circumstantial
evidence that two of Pakistan's largest militant organizations --
Lashkar-i-Taiba and Hizb ul-Mujaheddin -- collaborated in the March 23
massacre of 24 Hindus in the Kashmiri village of Nadimarg. A senior official
in India's Home Ministry, which handles internal security, said in an
interview this week that at least 3,000 "trained Pakistani cadre" are
currently operating in Indian-held Kashmir.

India regards these people as terrorists. Pakistan says its assistance to
those it describes as "freedom fighters" is limited to diplomatic, political
and moral support. It has condemned the Nadimarg massacre and called for an
independent third-party inquiry into it.

"This is creating the impression that the United States is unable to put
sufficient pressure on Pakistan," Kanwal Sibal, India's foreign secretary,
said in an interview today. "If these terrorist attacks on a large scale
continue, then at some stage in terms of our public opinion the government
will find it very difficult to continue to absorb this."

Sibal said that comparisons between Pakistan and Iraq were rhetorical in
nature and were not intended as "advance indication for any kind of imminent
action" against Pakistan. Nevertheless, Western diplomats both here and in
Islamabad are worried about the potential for military conflict later this
spring, when mountain snows recede and militant infiltration typically
increases.

They fear that India, which nearly launched a war on Pakistan last year
following terrorist attacks against the Indian Parliament and other targets,
may feel it has no option but to take action if there is another incident on
the scale of the Nadimarg massacre.

While such a response would likely be limited to airstrikes on training
camps or army posts on Pakistan's side of the Line of Control, diplomats
worry that the situation could escalate out of control. Both countries have
small nuclear arsenals.

"If they do something, it won't be in the expectation it's going to solve
the problem," a Western diplomat said. "It will be almost entirely
political."

On March 27, following blunt private warnings from Indian officials that
they were close to taking action against Pakistan, U.S. Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw took time out from
an Iraq war summit at Camp David to jointly urge Pakistan to "fulfill its
commitments" to end militant incursions into Kashmir.

Despite the statement, Western diplomats assert that the case against
Pakistan is not as clear-cut as Indian officials claim, noting that some
Pakistani militants are nearly as hostile to Musharraf as they are to India
and the United States.

State Department officials reacted sharply this week to Sinha's attempts to
draw parallels between the governments of the ousted Iraqi president, Saddam
Hussein, and that of Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the war against
terrorism.

But Western diplomats in New Delhi and Islamabad say they have been dismayed
by what they regard as Musharraf's failure to fulfill the promise he made
last spring to "permanently" end militant incursions into Kashmir.

They say they generally concur with the Indian assessment that after
dropping sharply in June and July, infiltrations increased -- by how much is
unclear -- in the latter half of 2002 before trailing off in February due to
heavy snows. They also share India's pique over the release from house
arrest of several leaders of militant groups ostensibly banned by Musharraf.

Among the leaders are Hafiz Sayeed, the head of Lashkar-i-Taiba, which got
around the ban by changing its name to Jamaat-ul-Dawa. The new group's
office in Islamabad is the same one that was used by Lashkar-i-Taiba. Last
month, Sayeed called for holy war against the United States in a speech to
antiwar protesters in the city of Lahore. Sayeed has said in recent
interviews that the government has not restricted his activities.

Musharraf, meanwhile, appears confident of continued backing by Washington.
According to senior Pakistani officials, in recent weeks he has described
receiving private assurances from both Powell and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head
of the U.S. Central Command, that Pakistan will get a piece of the
reconstruction business in Iraq in the form of supplying labor and some
construction material, especially cement.

Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.